Nov
This is an assignment essay I wrote for my Philosophy of Education module. It is kind of like a reflection with a combination of the actual eulogy I supposed a student would write if my life went in a right way. (HAHA)
It’s a little bhb (or egoism gone wrong – for people who don’t understand what is BHB) but who cares! 
Before copying and pasting the reflection from my assignment, I would like to thank the cute boys and girls of 3E5 for inspiring and triggering this essay!
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Writing a eulogy for myself is not a difficult task, all I have to do is to praise myself in all ways possible. Although it is deem as an ominous thing in the mind of people who subscribe to superstitions, I feel that it is a promise and a direction I set for myself. This eulogy is simulated in the point of view of one of my students. The first paragraph was extracted from an actual Teachers’ Day message I had gotten from the class.
“On a bright and sunny day, a tall and strong-looking female teacher walked elegantly into our class. At first, we found her fierce but we started to like her after a few days. She is actually a nice teacher!”
It was a pleasant surprise to witness the application of the skill I taught in class. Although the cheeky boys tried to use euphemism for the description of my physique, I appreciate their effort and intentions when writing this message. The rest of the eulogy stemmed from this Teachers’ Day message.
“Ms. Ng taught us English in the year 2009. The above message was one that was written on the Teachers’ Day card in the same year. I can still remember why the message contained an abundance of descriptive words which seemed like an exaggerated form of sucking up to the teacher.
Ms. Ng was a teacher unlike many others. Instead of getting the class to work on worksheets and past year papers, most of her lessons were interactive and gave non-stop prodding to our sedated brains then. Let me give you an example of one such lesson.”
It is a vision I set for myself that my lesson are to be as stimulating (for the students) as possible. I take a Pragmatist’s approach when designing my lessons and activities. My preference for using materials catered to students’ interest and ideas/contexts they can relate to in their lives also stems from a Pragmatist’s point of view. I have always believed in imparting a skill rather than purely content during a lesson. While the content can purposefully aid the students to score well in a typical examination, the skills will enable them to be able to cope with the different variations of questions, some not even seen in past year papers. It all boils down to whether a teacher should prepare the students for examinations or for life and I subscribe to the latter.
“On a much dreaded afternoon English period, while the class was still in their ‘recess’ mode, Ms. Ng strutted into our class. After the usual greeting, she proceeded to set up her laptop and the projector. The first thing she showed us was a whole paragraph of words. At first, the class was not paying attention since most of us were drowsing in our imaginary worlds. Without much hesitation, Ms. Ng started narrating the first sentence. Several words began to catch our attention and those were words that could hardly be heard in a formal English lesson. “Mini-dress”, “Chanel”, “espadrilles” and other words were narrated by Ms. Ng in a story-telling tone. The class was getting more and more interested. The curiosity and interested can be equated to the excitement in a young child when they hear/use “forbidden” words like the “s” word adults used in swearing. Ms. Ng brought us through the paragraph in a tone as though it was an action flick. All of a sudden, she stopped. The story had not officially ended but she stopped. I had to read the last sentence in the paragraph at least three times before I could get out of denial that the paragraph, as well as the narrating, had ended. The class demanded for the rest of the story but Ms. Ng shook her head. She announced that one paragraph is enough, much to the class’ dismay. One of the girls sitting in front asked the question that the entire class was dying to ask, “Where can we read the rest of this story?” Ms. Ng replied in a nonchalant tone that the class would not be able to find this piece of writing anywhere else. Before the class could chorus a “why”, Ms. Ng gave a chuckle (like she always did when she was up to something) and declared that she was the one who wrote the paragraph and unless someone plagiarized it, no one will ever find it elsewhere.”
Almost all my lessons start with a trigger, in which I define as something that captures, interests the students and fuels their desire to want to learn for the rest of the lesson. Like a typical Pragmatist, I seldom use the prescribed textbooks and I prefer to use materials that I have gathered over the years. These materials include my own writings (modified to cater to the level of English language proficiency of my students), books of various genre, newspaper/magazine articles with graphics and interesting content, online articles and trivia. The common thing in my materials will be the fact that they are from different disciplines, some even a combination of a few disciplines. I feel that the English Language is not a one-dimensional subject and it is the task of an English teacher to broaden the students’ knowledge and awareness of different issues from the various disciplines.
“The class was generally inclined to Science more than languages and humanities. We were not the kind of students who like to read nor were we very receptive to reading anything. However, Ms. Ng’s paragraph had gotten, at least, a number of us to have the desire to read more – and that was quite a feat. The class persistently asked for the follow-up to the paragraph but Ms. Ng did not give in. Instead, she asked the class what made them like the piece of writing so much. Some of the girls answered that they could see, in their head, the main character all nicely dressed up to the exact details as depicted by the writing. Ms. Ng broke into a wide grin and she wrote one word on the whiteboard – Visualise. She mentioned that certain words can evoke feelings and trigger images in our heads and when they are used in writings, the words would come to life. This sounded like a far-fetched and abstract idea to the class and many of us were quite lost. Ms. Ng then went on to pass around a few objects in the class. She instructed the class to choose one of the objects and got the class to group according to the objects we chose. Before giving any further instructions, she said, “If I can do it, so can you.” She then went on to get the class to come up with sentences to describe the object we chose.”
Instead of making the objectives of the lesson known, I prefer to allow the students to self-discover and reflect upon the lesson. By doing so, the students will be constantly questioning the lesson content and themselves and it will act as a good exercise for reflective thinking. In this lesson, instead of teaching them the structure and language features of descriptive writing, I would rather introduce them to the skill of writing to invoke visualisation in the reader. This skill will apply for a variety of text types and not restricted to descriptive writing.
The “Power of Choice” is a powerful agent that helps to increase motivation and morale. By being able to choose the item they want to work on, the students will be able to inject more passion into the task since it is something that they decided for themselves and not forced upon them. Working in groups will also help them see the same object in different perspectives when they share amongst themselves.
“It was supposed to be a simple lesson teaching descriptive writing but Ms. Ng brought us through a “roller coaster ride”. Using a simple paragraph, she introduced visualization in writing, left us hanging in the air and got us really excited in trying out the feat for ourselves. She ended the class with a homework which the class was very willing to do – she got us to think about the ending that we want and we were to write the ending as homework. I remembered that the most exciting and highly stimulating ending was written someone who was very weak in English. Ms. Ng lavishly praised him for his efforts and that he made her proud. I was the one whom Ms. Ng praised but I was not convinced. When I approached Ms. Ng, all she said was – it is not all about the standard of English or how widely read the person is, it is also about how much desire and passion the person has in his writings.”
I am not stingy with praises. However, I use them only when I sincerely feel so. Hypocritically and a lack of regulation of praising the students will either lead to them feeling numb or change their perception of the teacher.
“For the class, Ms. Ng was an inspiration. She had led us to do things we never thought possible.”
Ministry of Education’s vision of “Lead, Care and Inspire” has helped set my own vision and direction. I want to be able to lead the students in active learning, care for the students and provide them a conducive learning environment, and I hope to inspire them to have a passion in whatever they choose to do. Like I wrote earlier in the introduction, writing all these is not difficult. My journey of being a teacher is just at its starting point. The above will be a promise and focus set for myself to aid me in my quest to Lead, Care and Inspire.
P/s: There are many grammatical errors I found after I proofread my essay but I’m too lazy to correct them here… ignore the errors please.
